Reaching Through Shadows
by Abby Ebon
Summary: When Pegasus walked into the Shadow Realm; he stirred the Magician of Black Chaos, as ancient and as powerful as the Shadow Realm itself. Bakura, a thief, is all too intrigued with this, stumbling into the truth of who Harry Potter has become. Slash.
1. Chapter 1

_**Reaching Through Shadows **_

_Abby Ebon_

O.o.O.o.O.o.O

_Disclaimer_: So, I'm fair certain I do not – now or ever - own "_Yu-Gi-Oh__"_, and quite positive I only own "_Harry Potter__"_ in my more deluding dreams. So that's square, aye?

_Note_; so, yeah, new story, I do expect someone to say something slightly lecture-sounding, "I should know better" with a vague undertone of "better not forget the _other_ stories!" _meh_! –my subconscious is very devilish, taunting me like this with new ideas while others simmer on the backburner. Let's hope no one smells something burning.

Anyway, enjoy!

O.o.O.o.O.o.O

"What…is this place?" It was a whisper in the dark. If the truth were told, it was not a question one would have expected an answer to. It was a man who had asked this question, his features were not hidden, even through the darkness and shadows that swirled about him should have obscured. He was still, for he was afraid. He felt _things_ from these shadows, the sort of things that frightened children in the dark.

"You should be dead, does it matter?" This voice sounded as if it came from behind him, though it echoed oddly, rough, as if unused to speaking aloud - so when he spun to look over his shoulder. It did not surprise him to find he was right, that were no one had stood before, someone now did. This stranger was like no one he had known in life. His shape was wrong, stretched strangely as if it had been something forced upon him; unnatural.

Something like black leather stretched over his entire body, from his feet to his fingers to the collar about his neck, three crimson bands wrapped below each of his knees – three more along each of his thighs, three more from wrist to elbow, though only two wrapped about his biceps.

Atop his head was a horned crown with thick ruby vines wrapping thrice about the curving black, though in the center were two emerald eyes – one seemed the source of the pausing rubies, the larger was plainly protected with the ruby vines wrapped about forming two shields on either side, the ruby then spiraling upward to from a point above the black crown.

Wild black hair fell from the horned crown - long enough to reach the knees – though it seemed instead to dance untamed with the shadows that were about them. He could not see the strangers face, though he made out easily the staff he carried of a black metal taller then he was; at its top it entombed a sphere of emerald that seemed the source of the pulsing rubies which glittered along the staff, all of it forming something like a teardrop; the opposite side ended with a wicked looking scythe-like blade. It was plainly a weapon.

"Who…what…are you?" His voice was still richly smooth, though it shook in uncertainty. He did not like these surroundings, and he felt as if he was only at the edge of some great abyss that he could be dragged into and never find his way out of. It all depended upon this person.

"So many questions, you'll not find your dead wife here. I would know if she was in this place. Stop looking with that _eye_ here; you'll waken something that you won't like. This is your only warning." The stranger started to turn away, but the man did not want to see him go – not yet – and called out.

"What can you do to me if I ignore it?" Slowly the horned crown turned and sickly red eyes that glimmered in amber turned to regard him. Those eyes were alien, strange – monstrous.

The stuff of nightmares, pale skin tinged blue – like not long dead flesh, it let off a dim glow, as if all that stood in the way of the smothering power was the pale flesh and black scars. They marked each corner of his eyes, with two long black scars beneath each his eyes, the scythe-like marks etched into his cheeks. The most threatening was the black scar that trailed from his bottom lip to his chin. This was not a creature that ventured into the light.

"I will come for you and you will suffer for it. Waken." It was an order the silver haired man with a golden eye could not disobey. He left that shadowy realm, waking to an empty bed, which some would think worse.

He thought though, that as he woke he heard voices...

O.o.O.o.O.o.O

"Must you be so harsh? You did not have to do that. He does not yet mean us any harm." This was a kinder voice, soft and musical, female. Amber-crimson eyes glanced to the side to regard his companion. He had expected her, in his own way.

She was dressed in soft blues that formed her armor and the light pinks that seemed misplaced in the shadowy world they stood at the edges of. Her hair was copper yellow, matching the belt around her waist that seemed to hold up her skirt. The boots looked the same soft metal that formed her staff of gold spirals at one end and a golden orb at the other.

"_Not yet. It was necessary_." He did not speak aloud to be understood this time, but she sighed having heard him within her mind, his voice was the same as it had been aloud. His lips quirked upward when she refused to speak mind to mind with him, instead stating her words aloud while frowning at him.

"I know it was _necessary,_ Magician of Black Chaos, that does not mean you should be so harsh." She put her empathies on the last word most of all, her eyes pleading with him to see her reasoning. He was still beside her, musing on her words for a long while as he started unseeing into the shadows. He did not fear them. She did not know if he ever had.

She still was wary of those same shadows. It seemed to her that they had swallowed her up and made her into this likeness, an image of herself that did not fit into the puzzle that was the world outside this shadow realm. He, unlike her, had always been a part of the shadow realm – the most powerful of them, more knowing of its chaos then he had ever let on. They did not know if he had always been a part of the shadow realm, or if he had come first before the shadow realm. They did not dare ask.

"_Does it worry you so much, my cruelty_?" His harsh echo tones were faint within her mind, almost timid with his question. She blinked at him as if he had slapped her, though he had not stirred from his stillness. He seemed very far away, though he stood next to her.

"You are not cruel. I know you better to think you are _that_. Still, I do not _like_ what you may become if you continue along this…unhealthy… path." He acted as their protector, as he always had – but he had become harsh with those that attempted to cross the shadow realm from either side.

Where he would once have appeared to a monster and led it elsewhere –deeper into where they sought to escape - as a morbid joke, he now terrified them into the heart of the shadow realm.

Humans that were dead –or lost in their lives – which the shadow realm sought out, he would have once gently let them find out about their mortality while they traveled – protected – at his side; now he told them outright, forcing the knowledge upon them with the memory of their deaths.

She almost felt she did not know him anymore, for all that she had known him since he had found her wandering the shadow realm and asked if she was lost – she had not been – then he had let her follow him, until his path crossed with Dark Magician and she found in her nature that she was like them having stayed too long in the shadow realm.

"Nor I…" This voice rumbled from the shadows, as soothing as she had ever known him to be. Dark Magician stepped to stand to the others side of their most powerful and ancient friend, for his part the Magician of Black Chaos only nodded slightly in greeting as if he had expected nothing less then to be met with the two of them at this time and place. Perhaps he had known all along.

"Dark Magician…." She could not help but be relieved to see him, smiling to see the cloth-like soft metal that was his armor was still the same shinning blue, glimmering like a light in the darkness that was the shadow realm. His staff at his side, at ease in a way only he could be around the Magician of Black Chaos. Once, when she had been the girl Mana she had known him as Mahado, but even she did not understand his easy familiarity with the Magician of Black Chaos there was something between them that was like friendship.

"_You would abandon me then, if I went along the path you dislike_?" This time those same echo tones were curious, like an echo in a cave calling out a question. Dark Magician let out a soft hiss, as if pained – startled, she could only respond as her nature demanded. She was the free spirit of the three of them, the child.

"_Never_! How could you think _that_?" She blinked back tears, finding her heart ached for him – he had _always_ been alone – though she had once been foolish to think he was evil. Over time she had learned otherwise and found in him a friend.

"Do not fool yourself, old friend, you know us better then that." Those were the only words the Dark Magician allowed himself to reassure the other. Magician of Black Chaos looked between them, his gaze restless as it fidgeted to either side. For a while they stood in silence, and then he started to fade at the edges, intent on going elsewhere. She found she was not surprised, he never lingered long when he was not comfortable.

"_Perhaps I do, perhaps I do not_." It was dismissive, but she recognized something familiar in those echoing tones. She spoke thoughtlessly then, in accusation.

"You…you are _frightened_!" He was gone, swallowed up by the shadows to go elsewhere. Somehow she knew, all the same, that he had heard her and this was his acknowledgment of that fact in his own way.

"Surely it is obvious, he has every right to be so frightened." It was whispered sorrow, though when she looked up she found that the Dark Magician was not looking at her, but into the whirling darkness that surrounded them in a silent stillness.

"Why…?" She murmured softly; she had never known the likes of _him_ to be frightened. It made her, in turn; fear what caused him such distress as to lash out as he had been.

"That man – the human with the gold eye – his name is Pegasus." This was the only musing of the Dark Magician he offered for her to put to logic. Pressing her lips together, she found the pieces did not fit. She still did not understand and felt slow for it.

"_So_…?" She saw his quiet smile, the tilting of his lips even as she edged him on for more information then what he had offered. It annoyed her that he found her so amusing; though she knew he would never lead her on to purposefully get such a reaction. It was his way to let others learn from what knowledge they gathered. Only their history as teacher-and-student allowed her the lenience from him as she had.

"_He_ will create a _game_; it will capture the minds of others. It will reshape us. It will mimic us only in form to start with, and then it will become our truth." Those were bitter words, pained with loss. He already mourned the past – what they had been – while he was as unsure as the Magician of Black Chaos to their future.

"What about the Magician of Black Chaos….? Where will he fit into it?" She found herself frightened then, as she considered it. They might be _enemies_ in the uncertain future, if this was the way the Magician of Black Chaos would continue. He had always been there for them, though others considered him an uncertain ally even in the best of times.

"He will be feared; he will be hated. We must not stray from his side, we must watch him." She found herself nodding at his words, finding an ease in them. Magician of Black Chaos had always been distant, but he would not grudge them for following him about like a pair of pups.

"So, we are to protect _them_ from _him_? We are to become his…wardens?" She looked out into the edges of their shadowy realm and for a moment saw it for what it was; a prison. One which they could shape to their will, with certain strengthens or weaknesses in mind, but still – only a pretty prison in the end. She wondered if the Magician of Black Chaos had always seen this place as such. The thought was gone when the Dark Magician spoke.

"No. We will be to him what we have always been, _friends_." That word was hissed, resistant to the sway of the shadows that whispered and tugged other less charities thoughts to their minds. They fought those thoughts and inclinations, for they would not be what they were if they gave in so easily to the will of this place; this prison.

"But…the Pharaoh, he will call to us in time, what of the Magician of Black Chaos then?" She worried most of all; what the Pharaoh would think of them? For his thoughts would shape them the most, would become their truth, their laws. His beliefs in their natures would make them solid in a way they had not been since coming into the shadow realm.

"We must wait and see; even I do not have all the answers…" His lips quirked in amusement, and she rolled her eyes as she followed him as he started to walk away. Her last grumbled words seemed to chase them into the shadows.

"I _know_ that."

O.o.O.o.O.o.O

_Note_; so, yeah, the Magician of Black Chaos is one Harry Potter. How? That one is more complicated, but I'll tell you as we go along with this story. It is a love story, sort of. Anyway, I just wanted to stick my tongue out over the fact that –ha, ha – I now have my own little reasoning to why Pegasus seemed to recognize the Magician of Black Chaos in a personal way when the Pharaoh summoned him…

PS; describing the Magician of Black Chaos was a pain in the ass, I know damn well thank-you-very-much that emeralds are not in any way the _source_ of rubies, but I needed a way (which makes sense in only the way that dreams do at times) to make the whole "image" work, thus my logic. So, _shush_ if you don't like it, don't worry this will be the last time I try to describe the Magician of Black Chaos from this sort of perspective.


	2. Chapter 2

_**Reaching Through Shadows **_

_Abby Ebon_

O.o.O.o.O.o.O

_Disclaimer_: You _must_ be kidding. I do hope you are _kidding_. To think I – now or ever – could ever own the likes of "_Yu-Gi-Oh__"_….also, the rumors of my playing a part in creating "_Harry Potter__" _have been greatly_ exaggerated… _please don't hurt me?

_Note_; … this is for _Firehedgehog_'s very belated birthday; hope you had a good one!

Oddly, what started me writing this chapter was a _dream_. It went something like this;a island on which there were people gathered, a Bakura-spy, and something about the ill people on the island with diabetes neglecting treatment and the Shadow Realm coming to be in reality because of that… (_what the hell_ the connection between diabetes and the Shadow Realm was, I have no freaking clue now, but it sure as hell made scary-sense at the time); there was this doctor-guy who was controlling the island sitting at this desk, glowing this fiery-blue color (Bakura was there, and I was sort of looking over his shoulder as he/we were hiding)...anyway, I got the sense he (the doctor-guy) was connected to the Shadow Realm even as he said;

"Yes, Master Pegasus…"

…. and I just sort of went and thought, as I was waking up….

"_Damn-it, Fire', Yu-Gi-Oh_…._I knew it!_"

Mind you, my thought only make sense when you understand _who_ is the driving force behind this bit of story, and consequently understand that my longest friend on this site; _Firehedgehog_, had been asking about updates persistently...as invading my dreams is where I draw little lines and sharpen pointy sticks, I must then give in….-_giggles_-

O.o.O.o.O.o.O

He knew that he had, whatever nicer words might be used, fled from them. There was a time he would never have. A time he would have thought, harshly, perhaps not wrongly – that he could never be a coward. He could not be so weak. To be so would have meant his death. Now, he thought it not far from the truth of things. With power came weakness, and he was as powerful as he had ever been.

It was the old terror that haunted him now. That forced him to remember _what_ he had been, _who_ he had been. Magician of Black Chaos closed his amber and scarlet eyes, and when they opened – unseeing, unfocused – they were ivory and emerald.

He it himself remember _that_ then. For it puzzled him, and he was always curious.

O.o.O.o.O.o.O

"You can not expect to die in peace, Potter." Tom purred the words, gloating, teeth gleaming in the flickering of flame. Real flame, not magic, it was a mockery. Magic, he could have used, could have gained some small amount of strength and warmth from. Tom denied him even that.

"But, of course not, Tom." It was a stranger that answered. Or it sounded like, not his voice, not to his own ears. His voice was rougher then he had ever remembered it being, it hurt to speak. He'd been screaming too long for it to not to hurt. Tom glared up at him – _up_, only because Harry was pinned up on the wall, bound with rope and barbed-wire, his bruised feet and broken toes did not so much as brush the dirt floor.

Slowly, he was bleeding out – dying, trapped – and bound. Bound by more then mere physical means, his magic was a flickering thing within him, he could see it, sense it within himself – but he could not touch it. Not without some measure of focus that he lacked. In the beginning, he had tried, had reached and screamed and bled for nothing.

Now he was pinned to a stone wall; aching and tired, body and bone numbed, though he knew – logically – he should be screaming from the pain. Even if that magic was a touchable, tangible thing, he would now falter in using it for more then the next breath. He did not even know if he was bleeding uselessly, or if there was some dark purpose to it.

At first, it had looked as if that might be it; the room, it was underground – and in front of him was a single cruel alter, stone worked like something out of ancient times. To either side of it, pillars, the source of the only light was atop them. Harry guessed (because the light, dim as it was, still blinded him) beyond those was the spiraling passage – a decent into this madness.

"Take care of your tongue, Potter. Least you loose it." A shadow that was not supposed to be there, on the ground at Tom's feet, was flickering – blinking and winking up at him, as if amused. Harry glared at it, lopsided and blurry eyed.

"Whatever. Not much more you could do to me, Tom." Harry knows that much to be true. Day by day, it seeps from him, his magic; he had not before realized how he had come to rely upon it being there, living with and within him. He'd gotten used to it, after learning what it was he felt within himself, even come to welcome the comfort it offered him. Now it was being dragged from him; he felt it keenly, that pain. It was as if hooks were tearing into his skin, again and again, until those tiny hooks scraped against raw bone and deeper still.

Tom _laughed_ then, but Harry shook his head, it was wrong-sounding. It did not sound like Tom. And Harry by now would have known that much, what Tom did and did not sound like, if nothing else - having his existence maintained or punished on Tom's whim. It gave him a better idea of Tom's mood, the knowing of his voice, it was a necessary learning – not one he had enjoyed.

"Ah, Harry, you know me better then to say such things…" Tom came closer still, and the wrongness about him that Harry had sensed grew, shifted – changed into something closer to the surface. It was real now in a way it had never been before. Harry did not know it, but that he sensed such things was a credit to him, both because of his current condition, and how his magic had dwindled within him.

Smooth nails, manicured and clean, scraped against the rough bristles on his cheek. It almost surprised Harry, this reminder that he was real and solid, still, not yet some spirit knowing only pain and tormented hopelessness. He had also aged, he guessed, usually Tom shaved him. Some twisted sense of perversity within Tom enjoyed "taking care" of Harry while Harry was helpless within his grasp.

It did no good for Harry to struggle or protest, and the first few times he had been cursed to stillness; a mercy Harry had learned too late. Now whatever Tom did, he made sure it was personal – real – without the sway of magic getting in the way to take the edge off the bluntness. The scrape of a blade at his throat, the smoothness of his cheeks afterward, it all stuck to him like some gritty sickness clinging to his memory even long after the hair had grown again. Harry wondered, sometimes, if others (for surely there were others, prisoners, entombed somewhere within here unheard by any who were not meant to hear, when they screamed) could claim such "care" by the hands of Tom.

"_Why do you tempt me_?" Harry jerked within Tom's grasp, for all that he had learned not to. That it made it worse, that it excited Tom to find Harry still with his spirit unbroken. Perhaps it was a curiosity Tom liked about Harry. But this…it was wrong.

It was not Tom's voice. There were echoes of Tom in it, like the gleaming surface of a river running fast. The true power came from swifter currents beneath. So Harry thought he heard now. He could not be yet sure, but he felt it, welling up within him – a fear, animal and senseless. It had to be faced, while he still had the strength to battle it down, before it consumed him and Harry started to scream. Harry knew he sometimes went mad, but that, he had believed and taken pride in knowing – was only when Tom was not watching, knowing. Harry dared then to do then, here and now, what he avoided save when he was at his weakest, and forgot how Tom didn't like it when their eyes met.

_Black eyes_. Dull and depthless these shadow eyes glistened down at him, as if they were made of darker stuff then the dark around them, and the dark gave off a light so Harry could now glimpse the true stuff of shadows and monsters.

There were not the fresh gleaming blood-red of Tom's eyes. Harry felt his breath hitch at his throat. This was not Tom at all, this was a stranger riding Tom's body as if it were merely some near-dead thing of flesh and stupid-brains, not a wizard at all; not like Tom.

"What have you done to yourself, Tom?" Harry asked then, knowing he had not the right to ask for all that might be done to him by the hands of this Other, his voice was still scraping and raw. Weak. Not-Tom of monster black eyes laughed again, it echoed in the dark spaces and corners that Tom had never touched with his own manic laugh.

"_A deal sealed, Harry Potter, a deal with a once sleeping demon. Is what your attendant has wagered. More power, more strength, for less mortality which is –after all - the stuff we demons crave. A good bargain, he thought at the time. Poor little lost orphan Tom, he did not know that mortality is the stuff humans are made of. It's what makes you, you, more then soul or memory. And Tom…well, the poor fool! He gave it up, all of it, bit by bit until there was nothing much of a wizard left in this body_." Tom's lips brushed teasing and taunting against his ear with every other word, whispering the words like some dirty secret. Harry had tensed up as much as he was able, fearing now in a way he hadn't before feared Tom.

"What are you, then – if not Tom? Why keep me here like this?" Harry asked, not as soft or secret. Letting his knowledge be heard by the dark that listened. He didn't hope that any would hear, no – but he did think better, sometimes, when he heard aloud his own voice. It was the only comfort he had grown used to.

"_I am the Sleeping One, the demon __Zorc Necrophades by Egyptian name; cursed to a millennium of sleep by Pharaoh __Atem, he who first wore the Red Crown of Lower Egypt with the White Crown of Upper Egypt. Who sealed my essence into my beginnings, that of the Shadow Realm_." His tongue, slick and wet, licked soothingly against Harry's listening ear.

"_Alas, I am not at full strength. Fear not, I will bring my full power to wakening, and with it, my wrath I will sweep this land, without mercy and full of wrath, I will make them bow, your people, for the insult of having forgotten the likes of I._.." Zorc Necrophades breathed matter-of-fact and clearly very amused with Harry. His lips curled against his neck, unseen, an intimate gesture that chilled Harry, but did not stop him from speaking.

"How..?" Harry asked, pained and feeling keenly his weakness and helplessness, he still had to know; even as he dreaded to know. His voice had gone rough and dry from its use; he was not usually so talkative.

"_You, wizard, with your life-blood sacrifice to the Shadow Realm; will be my key to the doors of this world and my freedom. With you, lovely, a spirit unbroken but bound, I will be whole_." Harry just breathed as the silence washed over him, cold and tugging, like the depths of a sea. It was trying for a calming, this silence, but as realization settled in under his skin, Harry realized that the calm was too cold and dreadful. Lulling, it would as soon kill as see him calm in life.

Pressed against him in Tom's body, Zorc Necrophades snickered, seeming to sense and know for truth what Harry only now grasped. Well manicured fingers pressed against his navel firmly –forcing the breath out of him, nails scraping his belly with an eager clarity. The skin was raw and red beneath them, Harry felt rather then saw.

"_Do not breath, little wizard, you will hurt the worse for it_." Was the only warning Zorc Necrophades murmured to him, before those nails and fingers and hands sunk into his belly as if his flesh was not there at all. Harry only grunted for answer, he could not scream. There was heat, he realized, within the pain that had him limp and helpless against the body – the murderer of his parents, his tormenter throughout his life. This puppet-body had been a predator that had waited him out, sniffing and surviving for want of Harry to die. Perhaps that relentlessness, that knowing that he'd been hunted – prey – all his life, helped him now in some way to think past the burning pain of hands being where they were never meant to be; _Tom's hands_, to add to the insult of it.

It was not Tom that held him now, letting Harry lean against him in limp pain, a gesture that likely looked kind for all it was true agony. It was the demon, Zorc Necrophades; and it _wanted_ something of him. Harry had learned all his life that people wanted for many things from others, wanting was a weakness.

It could be used, taken advantage of. Harry closed his eyes, distancing himself from the pain in his flesh and bones, letting himself go into his mind, further into himself then he could safely return from. He found it there, the well-spring of magic that bubbled, keeping him alive. It was a persistent thing, independent with a will of its own - and Harry felt a fondness for it. It worked to keep him moving, keep him breathing and his heart beating, even as Harry would rather die now then life through what pain he was suffering.

It was the thought of what Zorc Necrophades would _do_ with his dying now that kept him from faltering to let the cold silence of death lull him under the tide. He sunk himself furtherer into that well-spring and for the first time was warm and calm and comforted at the rightness of what he was doing.

He reached for what was hurting him, slowly _killing_ him, as the bubbling living-magic was eager to fix and put right. Harry felt those hands, made of flesh and bone, inside his stomach caressing his organs and intestines, bathing those murderous hands in his blood, soaking up his spirit, his mortality, and his magic. Zorc Necrophades would devour him from within his own body. It was almost distractingly funny, that irony.

Harry let himself sink into Zorc Necrophades, almost easy to do, as it was what Zorc Necrophades _wanted_ of him.

Then, unseen, Harry grinned.

Harry _pulled_ back, with all his magic and soul and mortality, he _pulled_ at the invading and devouring demon Zorc Necrophades. Perhaps taken by surprise, Zorc Necrophades realized too late that Harry was dying, yes, but _clinging_ - taking Zorc Necrophades _with_ him. Back into the Shadow Realm, where Zorc Necrophades was birthed and tied. Where the Sleeping One still slept, undisturbed even as Harry joined it within the Shadow Realm – not taking it's place, as he was supposed to, but no – now he was tied there as surely as Zorc Necrophades; the only true guard to what lurked within the prison of the Shadow Realm.

Together they had died.

O.o.O.o.O.o.O

Misty shadows stirred, as if sympathetic, alike something with intelligence might as it stretched, disturbed from slumber, with a beating heart of awareness. He did not know if it was an illusion, or if it was truth. That beyond the shadows something slept, stirring rarely – was undoubted truth.

Yet he knew that within the shadows, beings and creatures with varying degrees of awareness, and intellect, thrived. Some were people, others less then beast – and still, more were the dreams of those outside this realm – those who knew the old lore and dreamt still of nightmares. If this was a prison, it was the sort that _sought out_ its victims, snatching them from far spanning worlds the mist of shifting shadow reached, slithering back in forth through time, always searching for - _something_.

He did not know what it looked for. What it sought. Worse, he knew that at one time, _he had known_ – and now, did not. That knowledge had been stolen from him, and he did not know how - or why.

He only knew that somewhere, in all the worlds and times the shadow mist touched, someone was _calling_ –summoning - for him. A hand curled into a fist, blue flickers burned into a steady glow. He knew he was being _called_. It was a tug in his navel; he knew it to be a summoning. He _could_ resist, though that was – ultimately - foolish.

At his booted feet, the shadows tugged like the tide, inevitable, far reaching as a sea. It would snatch him from this shore, an undertow that would spill him onto the other side of the shadows, leashed and bound to the shadows. There was no escape from this place, it only let one go at death – and, sometimes - not even then.

Magician of Black Chaos tightened his hand on his staff, and stepped forward, giving into the summoning. Willingly, he let the shadows take him.

O.o.O.o.O.o.O

Note; …forgive me, I had a harder time then I thought I would with the death of our Hero. It was, in the end, only that I could not quite figure out how to go about writing it in the most effective way. I've never gotten an idea all on my own, likewise, there are little bits that slip in mysteriously, though for a large part I either make up a "plan of attempt" or seek out certain individuals and subsequently shred a story like a bit of newspaper then have it glued back together for a better whole. All of whom at some point sat me down and forced me to write out what it was I wanted to put into this story, which as my very best friends only they can do. Without them, this would have remained an idea lucking in the darkness with amber-red eyes glinting at me; which is very disturbing, I assure you.

Thus, I can never thank enough these prized individuals who make themselves available at almost every _ungodly_ hour my mind might decide to metamorphosis a long dreaded term – that being my claim of sometimes-dread, "_I've got an idea_!" – these, my uncertainly sane friends, are my most precious - _and they know well who they are. _

O.o.O.o.O.o.O


End file.
